25605467

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Where Truth Happens: The Nepali House as MandalaAuthor(s): John GrayReviewed work(s):Source: Anthropologica, Vol. 51, No. 1 (2009), pp. 195-208Published by: Canadian Anthropology SocietyStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/25605467 .

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Where Truth Happens: The Nepali House as Mandala

John Gray University of Adelaide

Abstract: This article documents the existential possibility of the philosophical unreality of fundamental unity and diversity in the world. I explore this human experience through the cos

mology and domestic architecture of Hindus in Nepal. In tantric Hinduism of Nepal, the presence of the worldly diversity of peo ple and things as expressions of a cosmological unity is an exis

tential experience and a fundamental moral issue. I describe how domestic space, configured in everyday activities as a man

dala, is the medium through which these abstract cosmological ideas are given tangible form. Domestic mandalas are maps,

microcosms and revelations of the truth of the cosmos. In them,

everyday life becomes a dialectic of the practical and cosmo

logical directed toward an ever-deepening tacit and embodied revelation of the ultimate unity and truth of the universe.

Keywords: cosmology, phenomenology, Nepal, architecture, mandala

Resume: Cet article documente la possibilite existentielle de l'irrealite de l'unite fondamentale et de la diversite dans le

monde. J'etudie cette experience humaine par le biais de la cos

mologie et de l'architecture domestique des Hindous du Nepal. Ehindouisme tantrique nepalais congoit la presence de la diver site des personnes et des choses dans le monde comme l'ex

pression de l'unite cosmologique. II s'agit d'une experience exis

tentielle et d'une dimension morale fondamentale. Je decris la

fagon dont l'espace domestique, configure comme un mandala

dans les activites quotidiennes, est le moyen par lequel une

forme tangible est attribute a ces idees cosmologiques abs

traites. Les mandalas domestiques sont des cartes, des micro

cosmes et des revelations sur la verite du cosmos. Par eux, la

vie quotidienne devient une dialectique entre le pratique et le

cosmologique qui s'oriente vers une revelation tacite et incar

nee, s'approfondissant sans cesse, de l'ultime unite et verite de

l'univers.

Mots-cles: cosmologie, phenomenologie, Nepal, architecture, mandala

The man who contents himself with the role of specta tor of the world and of life and translates everything into a dialectic of abstract concepts exists indeed in one sense but not in another. For he wishes to understand

everything and commits himself to nothing. The "exist

ing individual," however, is the actor rather than the

spectator. He commits himself and so gives form and direction to his life. [Copleston 1963:215]

Introduction

According

to the philosopher Marvin Farber (1944,

1946): "experience (as well as logic) shows that" a

monistic universe?"a complete unified reality"?is untenable; so too is its opposite, a world of a diversity of

singularly unique events. If this is true logically and expe

rientially, then the radically monistic Hindu universe?the

truth of a fundamental unity that transcends time, space, cause and effect, and dissolves the diversity of all worldly

phenomena?in which people of Nepal live is also unten

able. My aim in this article is to show how and why in

their everyday experience Nepali villagers do not find

the truth of monism untenable. I do so through an account

of how in their practical activities of preparing, cooking and eating rice, Nepali householders spatially configure their domestic compounds into mandalas, sacred dia

grams that are simultaneously maps of the cosmos and machines for revealing the truth of cosmos as a funda mental unity. Living in domestic mandalas is productive of knowledge of the cosmos they represent.1 Further, unlike the explicit and contemplative knowledge pro

pounded by Farber about the truth of monism, the rev

elation of the fundamental unity of the cosmos produced in everyday activities is largely tacit and embodied. The

approach taken in this particular case of Nepali domes tic activities as simultaneously acts of building and reveal

ing the cosmos is the general proposition that being-in the-world is primarily praxical and embodied and that tacit knowledge enables, informs and enriches the actions

Anthropologica 51 (2009) 195-208 Where Truth Happens /195



and knowledge upon which people explicitly focus their

everyday lives.

The human condition is contingency: what it is to be

human emerges primarily through our everyday, practi cal engagement with the world rather than through a con

templative reflection upon the world (Arendt 1958; Hei

degger 1962; Jackson 1996). Accordingly, there is a

difference between the lived immediacy of being-in-the world and the distanced and reflexive accounts about

being-in-the-world, between a pre-reflexive, pre-theoret ical and praxical relation to the world?embodied actions

of using and doing things in everyday life?and a con

templative and reflexive relation to the world. "The knowl

edge whereby one lives is not necessarily identical with the

knowledge whereby one explains life" (Jackson 1996:2). Bourdieu makes a similar distinction: between the prac tical posture of people living-in-the-world with something

"practical at stake" and the theoretical posture of the

"external...non-practical, non-committed and non

involved" observer (or philosopher) who constructs the

oretical models of living-in-the-world (Bourdieu 1990:60). He warns us not "to slip from the model of reality to the

reality of the model" (1977:29): to assume that the model

of reality constructed by the non-involved observer is the

reality of the lifeworld of social actors about whom the

model is constructed. From this perspective, Farber's

analysis of the untenableness of monistic unity and chaotic

diversity is epiphenomenal; it derives from the theoreti

cal posture of the philosopher who constructs models of

reality using formal logic and an abstract concept of "the

world of experience" (1944:38). The possibility of monis

tic unity and its relation to chaotic diversity has a differ

ent look from the perspective of the lived experience of the

Nepali people who do have something at stake in the world

of everyday life: on the one hand, their pursuit of worldly

prosperity; on the other hand and paradoxically, their

renunciation of worldly prosperity. Such being-in-the-world and the practical knowledge

for doing so is largely embodied and tacit. "My body has

its world, or understands its world, without having to

make use of my 'symbolic' or 'objectifying' function" (Mer

leau-Ponty 1962:162). We are conscious with and through our bodies; we live in and constitute the world as embod

ied subjects. Further, this being-in and constituting the

world as lived bodies is primordially spatial. Humans

inhabit spaces through their body's constitutive con

sciousness and actions. We see, hear, feel and move in rela

tion to things with our bodies and these things have a spa tial relation to our bodies so that our inhabited space is

constituted as bodily space. Through the lived body's con

sciousness and actions, we project ourselves into the

world, embrace it, encompass it, and "dwell" (Heidegger 1975a:145) in it. We do not exist as conscious subjects with out it; it does not exist for us without our consciousness. In this sense, body and the surrounding spatial environ

ment are mutually constitutive; there is no body outside

its sensuous relations to the world.

"We can know more than we can tell" (Polanyi 1966:4). Much of the knowledge by which we live our everyday lives is tacit. It cannot readily be put into words; activities can be meaningful even if the meaning is not able to be

explained in words, explicit concepts or to be subject to

reflection (Jackson 1966:34). "This sort of knowledge can

be represented?made present?only through action,

enactment, or performance" (Fabian 1990:6). This is not

just the case that tacit knowledge is not formulated lin

guistically and not available for reflection, rather its effec

tiveness in enabling everyday life is founded on it not

being explicit and linguistic (Polanyi 1966; Bloch 1998:11).

By synthesizing this praxical, embodied and tacit

nature of everyday experience and knowledge, a pervad

ing theme of this paper is the way Nepali villagers come

to understand their paradoxical world of prosperity and

its renunciation through the everyday concepts and

actions of purity and impurity. More than being about the

state of the physical body, purity and impurity affect the

patterns of social relations and spatial movement of out

siders in the domestic mandala?what might be called

spatial disciplines of the body. They are also the every

day registers through which abstract and largely unspo ken cosmological themes of excessive attachment (impu

rity) to worldly diversity (the essence of prosperity) as

well as the dissolution and detachment from it (purity) are experienced and known. This means that the activities

of everyday domestic life and the places where they take

place are multifaceted?corporeal, social and cosmologi cal. As people move about their domestic compounds, they not only carry out everyday activities?entertaining

guests, processing grain, preparing food, eating a meal?

but also build their houses into mandalas, produce an

embodied, tacit and revelatory knowledge of the enigma of attachment and renunciation and turn it into a "bodily

hexis," that is, a permanent corporeal disposition of think

ing and feeling (Bourdieu 1977:93-94). How can I verify that Nepali villigers produce and

gain this personal knowledge of the cosmos that I claim

to be describing in this article? Again using Polanyi (1962), verification has the character of internal relations by which experience and knowledge themselves are consti

tuted. In everyday life, the process of verification con

sists of demonstrating tacit knowledge through per

forming embodied practices, the same process through

196 / John Gray Anthropologica 51 (2009)



which it was produced and acquired: we can only verify that we have acquired the tacit knowledge necessary to

speak a language by speaking it (Gill 2000:56). So, too,

my description of Nepali villagers' performance of embod

ied everyday domestic practices, and the explicit knowl

edge they verbalized among themselves and to me

(another form of embodied practice) about them, is the

mode of verification of their tacit knowledge of the cosmos

that the ethnography itself transforms into explicit knowl

edge. As Polanyi writes:

Yet personal knowledge in [our lifeworld] is not made but discovered, and as such it claims to establish con

tact with reality beyond the clues on which it relies. It commits us, passionately and far beyond our compre

hension, to a vision of reality. Of this responsibility we

cannot divest ourselves by setting up objective crite ria of verifiability?or falsifiability, or testability, or

what you will. For we live in it as in the garment of our own skin. [Polanyi 1962:64]

Kholagaun Chhetris The people whose paradoxical lifeworlds I describe are

members of a clan of high caste Chhetris living in the

hamlet of Kholagaun in the village of Banaspati located in

southern reaches of the Kathmandu Valley.2 Kholagaun consists of approximately 100 household groups (pariwar). Two-thirds are members of a single agnatic Chhetri line

age. The other households are from a variety of castes:

Brahmin, who are the highest ranking caste in the ham

let; other lineages of the next highest ranking caste,

Chhetri; mid-ranking and touchable castes of Newar and

Magar; and untouchable castes of Blacksmiths and Tailors.

Kholagaun Chhetri household groups range in size from

single person households (2), to nuclear households (39) and complex joint households (24). In most cases each

household group occupies a single "house" (ghar) con

sisting of the house building and the compound that sur

rounds and encloses it. In their rites and cosmological ideas, Chhetris of Kho

lagaun practice a syncretism of Vedic Hinduism and Tantrism characterized by three propositions about the world and the human condition. First, the danger of

human being-in-the-world is excessive attachment to peo

ple and things of the world, the consequent illusion and

loss of consciousness of the ultimate reality. This is the cause of humans being entrapped in the continual cycle of

death and rebirth. Second, liberation and release from

the cycle of death and rebirth is attainted through knowl

edge of the ultimate unity of the cosmos (Brahma) which transcends all worldly concepts of time, space and cate

gory. Third, there are the systematic equivalences be

tween the macrocosm and the microcosm, that is, there are

homologies and mystical connections between multiple

planes of existence?the cosmos, the city as mesocosm

(see Levy 1990), the temple and house in the Vastu

Sastras (see Kramrisch 1976 and Chakarbarti 1999), the

body and the mystic diagram, mandala.

This understanding of the human condition is founded

upon a Hindu (tantric) cosmology that describes being in-the-world as an enigmatic and paradoxical configura tion of the diversity of human individuals and social groups on the one hand, and a transcendent unity on the other.

Fundamental reality is an absolute unity that is a space

less, timeless, causeless void. Juxtaposed to but derived

from and encompassed by this ultimate cosmic unity is

the ordered diversity of spaces, times, people, animals, natural forces and material things of the everyday world.

The origin of this worldly diversity is described in the

self-sacrifice of the primeval cosmic being, Purusha? who

embodies the fundamental unity of the cosmos. All that can and will exist is immanent in his body. His self-sacri

fice is a creative act unleashing the diversity potential in

his body and establishing the microcosmic-macrocosmic

system of correlations between planes of existence. As a

result of Purusha's sacrifice, all perceptible time and

space, every different corporeal being and thing, and all

the variety of natural energies and forces in the world are

both distinct phenomena and an expression of the unified cosmos. To focus on the former is to experience reality as

constituted only by the diversity of sensible worldly phe nomena and to become attached to people and things through social and material relations (see Gray 1995). To

understand such attachments as the goal of life is to be shrouded in ignorance, to be caught in the continual cycle of death and rebirth and to be consigned to a continual

life-in-the-world of illusion. To focus on the latter is to

experience the everyday world of diversity as ultimately an illusion that hides the fundamental unity of the cos

mos; such enlightened knowledge leads humans to eschew the illusion of attachments and gain liberation or release from the round of death and rebirth.

Kholagaun Chhetris as Householders The cosmological paradox of fundamental unity and

epiphenomenal worldly diversity, asceticism and attach

ment, religious knowledge and illusion, liberation from and entrapment in the cycle of rebirth, also permeates the lifeworlds of Kholagaun Chhetris in the Hindu notion of the four stages of life through which high-caste people proceed. Together, they are cosmology iterated in the microcosmic form of the human life span.

Anthropologica 51 (2009) Where Truth Happens /197



The first stage is the Brahmacharya, the Life of the Celibate Student when a boy studies the religious texts under the guidance of a guru as a prelude to and a pre-con dition for marriage and entering the Householder stage of life. Most Chhetri boys go through the Brahmacharya stage only as part of the rite of passage (Bartaman) in

which they become adults. For women, the passage to adulthood and the Householder stage of life is the rite of

marriage. The second stage is the Grihastha, the Life of the Householder, of life-m-the-world, fully and actively engaging with the diversity of people and things moti vated by practical, everyday concerns. It includes mar

riage, raising children, living in a household and produc ing the material needs for its members, and worshipping the deities (see Gray 1995). The third stage is the

Vanaprasta, the Forest Dweller, when, having discharged the duties of the Householder, a man and his wife retire to the forest where they devote themselves to meditation and the practice of austerities including chastity. All of the previous stages are a preparation for the final and

most radical renunciation demanded of the final stage of

life, the Sanyasin, or Wandering Ascetic, when a person renounces all worldly desires, together with the social relations and attachments entailed by them.

All adult Kholagaun Chhetris consider themselves to be in the Householder stage. Both males and females

experience a period of renunciation prior to marriage: for

boys, it is the renunciation of the celibate Brahmacharya enacted during Bartaman; for girls, it is the analogous renunciatory celibacy of remaining a virgin until mar

riage. Kholagaun Chhetris told me that they could not

remember anyone from the village who had become a For est Dweller or a Wandering Ascetic. In effect, the four

stages-of-life are reduced to a juxtaposition of two con

trasting modes of being-in-the-world. One is the House

holder, the ordinary person-in-the-world whose life is defined by moral duties (dharma) that motivate actions and the aim of such action is to produce "practical" and beneficial results ("fruits") in this world. It is this action in and for the world that both produces and engages the

diversity of people and material things which are the

objects of one's attachments, desires and passions. But as a result of such worldly-oriented action and attach

ments, the Householder is caught in the continual round

of birth-death-rebirth into the world. The other mode of

being-in-the-world is the Renouncer, personified by the

asceticism and detachment of the Brahmacharya,

Vanaprasta and Sanyasin. The goal of such detachment is

to achieve liberation from the round of birth-death-rebirth

and to realize the fundamental unity of one's self with all

other selves and things.

To be a Householder, then, is to live in an enigmatic lifeworld that is at once practical and cosmological. As

they engage in everyday domestic activities, Kholagaun Chhetris are at the same time fulfilling their sacred duties. Their Householder dharma is to live in and form attach ments to the world; their aim is to prosper not just in the narrow sense of material wealth but also in the wider

sense, captured by the Nepali word samfddhi, of an abun dance of those things that characterize the "good life":

children, health, well-being and peaceful relations with

oneself, other human beings and the deities. At the same

time, they are enjoined to remain detached from these manifold worldly attachments, to resist enslavement by them (Madan 1987:3) in order to achieve liberation by see

ing through the veil of illusion that conceals the funda mental unity of the cosmos. Their goal is to live a life char acterized by the enigma of detached attachment or

passionless passion.

Chhetri Houses The house is the primary locus and focus of the House holder's life-in-the-world. Its architecture is another iter ation of the enigmatic character of the human condition of the Householder. In Kholagaun, there are two types of houses usually consisting of two storeys. The type I call "traditional" (see Figures la and lb) is built with sun

dried mud bricks, carved wooden window frames and

doors, mud floors and tile or thatched roofs. Traditional houses generally have an open plan ground floor with four visible pillars forming a rectangle around a central pillar, a kitchen in far corner often behind a low wall to obstruct

visibility from the doorway, and a worship room gener

ally located on the second floor. The other type of house I call "contemporary" (see Figures 2a and 2b), indicating its more recent-construction using concrete for wall con

struction with wooden window frames and doors. The main difference is that these newer houses have separate rooms rather than an open plan with the kitchen located in the room furthest from the main entrance or on an

upper floor.4

Although they are distinguished by building materi

als and interior room layout, both types share four com

mon architectural features. First, houses are built on rec

tangular sites surrounded by a low wall that defines the

boundary of the domestic compound. They are located

toward one edge of the site away from approaching pub lic roads or paths, leaving space for a courtyard. This

results in a configuration of nested domestic spaces?

boundary, courtyard, verandah, main entrance and inte

rior of the house (see Figures 1 and 2). Second, houses are oriented with the main entrance opening out onto the




Figure la: Traditional house

I * 7\f I

\ si-''* * *'

??** ;im - Mil ^?^m v. fr^^^^l ^w. iiinii^BrtJM^B

Figure 2a: Contemporary house

courtyard allowing household members a clear view of it

and anyone who may be approaching the house from the

public path or roadway. Courtyards are distinct spaces and one of their important architectural functions is

mediating between the house and public thoroughfares outside the boundary of the house compound that are

potentially dangerous places where impure people of

lower castes, malign witches, malevolent ghosts and

other spirits linger. Third, houses have a covered and

raised verandah spanning the front of traditional houses

and some portion of the front of contemporary houses; its location makes it another mediating space, now

between the courtyard that is visible and the interior of

the house that is not visible to those outside the com

pound. Finally, houses are in the spatial configuration of a mandala.

HE te Be j Low wall _

Main Pillars Pil,ar 9

I_ Main_I Door Verandah

Courtyard

I_ Gate _I

Figure lb: Sketch plan of traditional house (ground floor)

Rear access

Kitchen |

_I Main

I_ door :

Verandah I

Courtyard

I- Gate -1

Figure 2b: Sketch plan of contemporary house (ground floor)

House as Mandala

A mandala is a mystic diagram. In Nepal, people use at

least two terms, mandala and yantra to refer to draw

ings with cosmic significance.5 Both are allegorical dia

grams that represent the nature and order of the uni

verse (see Figure 3). They are "map[s] of the cosmos.. .the

whole universe in its essential plan" (T\icci 2001:23). Tucci's

incisive description highlights three attributes of man

dalas and yantras. First, their primary referent is the cos

mos but each represents it in a different graphic mode:

mandalas use pictures and icons to depict religious con

cepts and deities who in turn personify the primary bod

ies and natural forces of the universe as well as the qual ities of humans; yantras use purely geometric designs?

squares, circles, triangles and the point?whose shapes

Anthropologica 51 (2009) Where Truth Happens /199



Nairatma Nepal, c. 18th century

Figure 3: Two forms of the mandala6

likewise stand for religious concepts, deities and the nat

ural forces and human qualities they personify. Second, mandalas and yantras are maps of the cosmos and, as

such, the spatial arrangement of the pictures and geo metric elements in the composition depict important char

acteristics of the cosmos. Third, more than just an alle

gorical map of the cosmos, mandalas and yantras are

microcosms of it. Whether composed of pictographic or

geometric elements, they are revelatory of the funda

mental unity of the cosmos as well as the normally hidden

system of correlations between planes of existence imma

nent in that unity: the cosmos, the deities, the human

world, and the body and psyche of the individual (Hop kins 1971:25; Tucci 2001:45); "knowledge of such mysti cal connections leads to power" (Gourdriaan 1979:57-58) and is a basis for ritual action and its efficacy (see Daryn 2002:164ff).

Despite their differences in representational form, mandalas and yantras share fundamental compositional

design elements for expressing this cosmology and pro

viding a "machine" (Zimmer 1972:141) for revelatory

knowledge: as a whole they are oriented to the cardinal

directions each of which is associated with a deity; they have a centre point (bindhu) surrounded by a concentric

girdle?either circular or polygonic?of line(s) and

space(s) that provide the dynamic quality of movement;

and they have an outer boundary line enclosing a sacred

space. This spatial configuration is constructed from three

primary geometric elements: the square, the point and

the circle, each representing a fundamental dimension of

the cosmos.

The square is the perfect four-cornered polygon. In

Hindu iconography, it is the geometric image of the space for terrestrial dwelling; it creates the spatial abode in

the-world for deities and humans. In the process of cre

ation, the cardinal directions orienting the square and the

terrestrial space it creates are the source of each other's

existence. The four sides and the cardinal directions?

east, south, west and north?are mutually constitutive; likewise the four corners and the intermediate direc

tions?southeast, southwest, northwest and northeast.

Each of the eight directions are associated with deities

representing, reigning over and personifying particular

aspects of the cosmos?the planets, natural forces, and

human qualities. By focusing on these elements, we can

abstract from the complex mandala a basic design con

figuration consisting of a four-sided, four-cornered poly gon aligned with the cardinal directions surrounding a

centre. In this configuration, the emphasis is on the ter

restrial world as a space of human habitation created and

defined by the sacred geography of the cardinal direc

tions and their reigning deities. In this auspicious con




figuration (see Figure 4), the mandala is a cosmological

space for action in-the-world. The directions and their

reigning deities have distinct qualities and meanings that

organize terrestrial space into a template for orientating human action. Kholagaun Chhetris align their action in

particular directions?either by physically performing it

in a particular part of a structure or diagram or by bod

ily facing a particular direction during action?so that the

nature of the action is compatible with the quality or char

acteristic of the direction toward which it is aligned. Such

harmonious and auspicious alignment portends benefi

cent outcomes for the actions through which Kholagaun Chhetri Householders engage with and form attachments

to the diversity of people, things and deities of the world

in order to achieve a prosperous life-in-the-world.

Both the point and its central location in the diagram are a spatial rendering of the fundamental unity and truth

of the cosmos in its un-manifested form before and after

space, time and the diversity of beings and things of the

world. Like Purusha, all is immanent in it; it is the point from which the world in all its diversity is created and it

is the point into which all creation dissolves. Movement

outward from the central point that forms a surrounding

space is the force of creation and evolution of worldly

diversity and the entrapment of attachment to it; move

ment inward toward the point is the force of dissolution

and devolution of worldly diversity and liberation from

its illusory power through knowledge of the fundamen

tal unity. The circle defines another type of space, a concentric

zone around the all-embracing centre point without ref erence to the cardinal directions. The concentric zones do

not immediately suggest the expanse of terrestrial space of human living but the space created by and for the diver

sity of people and things. Its orienting reference, then, is

the centre point "as the universe in its un-manifested

form" (Mookerjee and Khanna 1977:96), "as the princi

ple from which all form and creation radiates" (Buhne mann 2003:41). The zone(s) marked out by concentric

spaces around the point depict simultaneously the out

ward, expanding, centrifugal act of creating from the cen

tre point the diversity of things and beings, as well as the

space for them, and the inward, contracting, centripetal act of their dissolution into the centre point. By focusing on the point and surrounding concentric zone(s) elements, we can abstract another basic mandala design configura tion consisting of concentric zones?whether circular or

polygonic?around a point. In this revelatory configura tion, the mandala is a guide for understanding the cos

mos, whether achieved by meditation or action upon its

form. In sensual and embodied contemplation, as the eye

Mandalic / / /S. x. X^

Configuration: // / ^^\. ^^ /\ concentric zones / / / /N. / / / \ around a powerful / / / / / / / / centre / / v^ n/ / / /

Yantric / ̂ \. Configuration: / ^sJ polygon oriented by /ty / cardinal directions \ / / \

Figure 4: Two configurations of domestic space

fixes on the centre point and is drawn to move outward by the surrounding lines, the beholder experiences the un

manifested source, visualizes the creation of the diversity of people and things and feels the attachment to the world

that traps humans in the round of death and rebirth. As

the eye is pulled inward by the power of the point at the

centre, the beholder experiences the obliteration of diver

sity, discovers the illusion of attachment to it and comes

to understand the true nature of the universe as funda

mentally a timeless and spaceless unity in which all forms

of individual consciousness merge in the centre.

Intentional Construction of Auspicious Houses

As can be seen from the photos and sketch diagrams, Kho

lagaun Chhetri houses have the three characteristics of the auspicious configuration of the mandala: a four-sided

polygon oriented to the cardinal directions with a mate

rially or ritually established central pillar. Kholagaun Chhetris intentionally build this auspicious mandalic con

figuration into their houses through three interweaving processes of construction.7 The first is the material con

struction of the house which has a number of stages:

selecting the site, preparing the site, positioning the house on the site, laying the foundation and building the exter

nal structure and, finally, inhabiting the house. The sec

ond is linking these stages of material construction to the

Anthropologica 51 (2009) Where Truth Happens / 201



flow of cosmic time so that they take place at auspicious times calculated by the household priest to be compatible

with the horoscope of the owner. The third process is mak

ing the house an auspicious place for domestic activities,

portending well-being and prosperity for the owner and his household group. This involves creating a harmonious

spatial conjunction between the house and the space in which it is built, a space that is created in the act of build

ing. Spatial auspiciousness entails ensuring compatibil ity and harmony between the physical structure and the

spatial milieu in which the house is erected: during the

process of selection of the site, worship is performed to the

Deity of the Earth (Bhumi Puja); and, before the laying of the rectangular foundation, a "Foundation Ritual" (Jug Puja) is performed. In this rite, idols of deities associated with the cardinal directions are buried in the four corners

and another in the centre of the rectangle. When the foun dation is laid, these deities become part of the house struc ture itself and orient it auspiciously to the cardinal direc tions. In addition, rites are performed to neutralize evil or

harmful presences from the land and the house itself. This theme of auspiciousness is carried through into

the spatial layout as well. Kholagaun Chhetris intention

ally situate particular types of spaces auspiciously in rela tion to the cardinal directions.8 The three most important are the main entrance, the worship room and the kitchen. The main entrance is, in most cases, oriented to the south for two reasons, at once practical and cosmological. First, it situates the courtyard so that it receives the warming sun during the cold winter months. Second, while the

south is the inauspicious direction of the Yama, the deity associated with death, when entering the house, people are facing north, the auspicious direction of the deities, so that movement into the house towards the north por tends the beneficence of the deities. The worship room

should be in the northeast, the direction of the deity Isdn,

god of purity, knowledge and wisdom, which is the state, outcome and benefit of performing puja. In the majority of houses (66%) for which I have detailed room layout

plans, the worship room is located in the northeast; in

those houses in which the worship room is located in

another quadrant of the house, the worship alter and idols are located in the northeast corner of the room itself. The

kitchen with its cooking fire should be in the southeast, the

direction of the deity Agni, the god of fire. However, in

most Kholagaun Chhetri houses (72%), the kitchen is in the northern quadrant. This pattern makes sense in rela

tion to the location of the main entrance in the southern

quadrant: placing the kitchen in the northern quadrant of the ground floor means that it is the space or room far

thest from the main entrance. When looked at according

to the location relative to the main entrance, rather than

aligned with a cardinal direction, almost all kitchens in

traditional and modern houses are located far away from the main door either by being placed in the farthest cor ner or room of the ground floor or on an upper floor. In the next section I analyse how locating the kitchen far

away from the main entrance in terms of physical dis tance is placing it culturally in the centre of the domes tic mandala.

Conventional Construction of Revelatory Houses Bourdieu developed the concept of "bodily hexis" (1977:93) to describe the way in which the knowledge and disposi tions through which we conduct our everyday lives have not just a reflexive form in ideas and concepts that we

may be able to verbalize but also a tacit form (see Polanyi 1962, 1966) in the gestures and movements of the body. This duality of the verbal-reflexive and tacit-corporeal characterizes the forms in which Kholagaun Chhetris

experience cosmological ideas, build them into their

houses, and their houses into mandalas. To paraphrase Bourdieu, "bodily hexis is [cosmology] realized, em-bod

ied, turned into a permanent disposition, a durable man ner of standing, speaking, and thereby of feeling and

thinking" (1977:93-94). Bodily hexis entails moving in

space and such motility creates culturally significant spaces. In the remainder of the paper, I describe how Kho

lagaun Chhetris create concentric spaces of inclusion and exclusion through the durable patterns of household activ ities and movement in their compounds (see Munn 2003). This creation is mediated by an ensemble of concepts and

symbols that Kholagaun Chhetris constantly used to talk about purity and the dangers of impurity of lower caste

people; these concepts, symbols and people transfigure the abstract cosmological concepts of diversity and unity, attachment and detachment, illusion and revelation, into

everyday bodily practices of purity and impurity and activ ities of cooking and eating in the kitchen.

Purity and Impurity For Kholagaun Chhetris, being Householders means that

there are no more important media for living in the world

than their bodies and the food they eat to sustain them.

Purity (chokho) and impurity (juthho) are conditions of

what Kholagaun Chhetris called the "physical" or "mate

rial" body (bhautik sarir) that people have because of and in order to live in the material world (sansar). Like Hin

dus throughout South Asia, they identify substances pro duced by the body?saliva, perspiration, urine, excre

ment, blood, semen and mucus?as the primary sources

202 /John Gray Anthropologica 51 (2009)



of impurity as well as the products and signs of embod

ied life-in-the-Householder's-world. Eating is paradig matic of actions that cause impurity. When people eat, the food they touch as well as the hand which conveys the food to their mouths become polluted with their own

saliva. Likewise, defecating, urinating, sexual intercourse,

menstruation, sleeping (during which time people per

spire), and blowing one's nose are all everyday and nec

essary acts in which a person's own body becomes impure. These sources of impurity are all substances that flow

from the inside to the outside of the body and the impu

rity they produce is the result of transgressing the body's

boundary. This means that vital, life-maintaining, organic

processes inherently "produce" impurity. Kholagaun Chhetris cannot avoid them as part of their physical

being-in-the-world just as they cannot avoid the passions and attachments of their moral being-in-the-world as

Householders. This parallel necessity of, on the one hand,

corporeal life and the impurity it entails and, on the other

hand, the dharma of the Householder and the attach

ments it entails suggests that impurity is the everyday

bodily transfiguration of attachment, and by implication, that purity is the everyday bodily transfiguration of

detachment.

Purity as Detachment

Purity is a state of perfection characterized by a com

pleteness, wholeness and integrity that has not been cor

rupted by human action (see Madan 1987:58ff) or by

breaching the boundary between inside and outside. Main

taining or restoring purity entails bodily deeds of detach

ment and asceticism. Bodily-produced impurity is per sonal and temporary. It is personal in the sense that only the individual whose body produces the impure substance

necessarily becomes impure. It is temporary in the sense

that a state of purity is easily restored by two kinds of

activities?cleansing and abstinence. In cleansing, impu

rity is removed and the integrity of the body's boundary restored with running water that courses over the body and flows away. This is effective because water has the

property of absorbing the quality of the object with which

it comes into contact. For this reason, cleansing always involves water flowing over the impure part of the body

taking the impurity it has absorbed away from the body and thereby re-establishing its wholeness by creating a

separation from the organic substances which breached

its boundary. The physical separation from polluting

organic substances effected by bathing is a sensual prac tice of detachment from the corporeal life of the House

holder and the worldly attachments it necessarily entails

and from which it is impossible?like organic life itself?

to abstain. By cleansing after coming into contact with

impurity inevitably produced by the processes of the body,

Kholagaun Chhetris perform and experience their detach

ment from these processes. The other method of purification is ascetic practice,

usually consisting of abstinence from eating and copula

tion, activities which produce impurity. Such abstinences

involve avoidance or non-involvement with things of

worldly enjoyment?good-tasting food and the physical

pleasure of sexual intercourse. They are metonymic of a

Householder's lifeworld and the necessary attachment to

or passion for people and things?food, kinship relations

and sexual relations. The purity achieved by abstinence

from such passions and pleasures is another corporeal

experience of detachment in the midst of the attachments

of everyday life.

Impurity as Attachment

Impurity also has a permanent and collective form asso

ciated with castes whose members are affiliated through current or presumed historical practice with occupations that require contact with the impure substances or actions

of others' bodies: Washermen with other people's sweat in

the clothes they wash; Tailors with the skin of dead ani

mals used in the drum they play at weddings; and

Leatherworkers with the skin of dead animals in making shoes. In these castes, the occupation involves not just

physical contact with pollution but also a permanent and

excessive attachment to it in the sense that the activity is understood to have traditionally provided the means of

subsistence. People engaging in these occupations embody such impurity and pass it on genealogically so that col

lectively the pollution defining them as a distinct caste

group is part of their corporeal substance. Even if a par ticular person in one of these castes does not engage in the

traditional occupation, Kholagaun Chhetris still insisted

that they still embodied the collective impurity of the caste

through genealogical transmission.

If the body is the source and locus of impurity as the

everyday transfiguration of attachment, food and water are its main conductors. Caste groups in Banaspati are

characterized and ranked as "caste groups from whom

drinking water is accepted for consumption" and "caste

groups from whom drinking water is not accepted for con

sumption." Within the former category there is a further

hierarchized division between "castes from whom boiled

rice is accepted for consumption" and "castes from whom

boiled rice is not accepted for consumption." Such an extended and elaborate ensemble of concepts

and practices about the dangers of impurity transmitted

through food and physical contact renders the prepara




tions and consumption of food not just nutritionally essen

tial but also socially sensitive and cosmologically signifi cant. It is through the patterns of including and exclud

ing impure people from the increasingly interior

concentric zones of the domestic compound?courtyard, verandah, and kitchen?where rice is prepared and eaten, that Kholagaun Chhetris protect themselves and their

food from the impurity of low caste people and, at the same time, map the cosmos onto their domestic com

pounds, building them into a mandala of concentric zones

around the kitchen as the centre (see Figure 5).

Courtyard The courtyard is the space most visible from outside the

low boundary wall and most vulnerable to the impurity and dangers of impure people from outside the compound. It is the place where raw grains are dried or processed.

When rice is harvested in autumn, it is threshed in the

fields and brought to the house as paddy (dhan) to be

dried in the sun before milling. Once milled to remove the

chaff, rice (chdmal) is in the next stage of its transfor

mation into food. After milling, the courtyard is the place where rice is winnowed to remove the remaining chaff. It

is still considered raw because it is uncooked and it has not

been subjected to human action corrupting the wholeness

of the grains. It is in the process of cooking that the grains become vulnerable to the impurity of lower castes.

Concentric Zones of Domestic Compound

Courtyard

Verandah

Interior ? o _ I ̂ J2 S 2 Kitchen 21 f f & gj

k c " " h * ? 5 3 2 I? - - La ? s s * p <B 2 &> B O Cfl

I-1 1

Figure 5: The domestic mandala in the concentric configuration

Because raw grain is immune from impurity, there are few, if any, protective spatial exclusions. The court

yard is the place where anyone is allowed to enter rela

tively freely. In this respect the courtyard is the only place where members of untouchable castes can enter. The reverse is also the case: Kholagaun Chhetris do not fear

becoming impure by entering the courtyard of low caste

people.

Verandah

The verandah mediates the visible courtyard and the invis

ible interior of the house. Since it runs across the front

of the house which faces into the courtyard, it is, like the

courtyard, visible from outside the boundary. But like the

house interior, the verandah is also a raised area above

the courtyard on the same level as the ground floor and it is covered by a roof. Its architecturally mediating char

acter is matched by its use as a socially mediating space between the public courtyard and the more secluded house

interior. In traditional houses, there is often a raised

wooden platform at one end of the verandah that people use for sitting in the sun and entertaining guests accom

panied by snacks; in modern houses, either chairs or a

grass mat are brought out for host and guest. In terms of

spatial inclusions and exclusions, the visitors and guests entertained by Kholagaun Chhetris on their verandahs are most often people of equivalent purity. They some

times sit and talk with people of lower castes from whom

they will accept water but snacks are not offered. People of untouchable castes (from whom they will not accept water) are usually not allowed on the verandah, particu

larly when snacks are being served.

These spatial inclusions and exclusions are imposed because the method of preparing the snacks makes them more susceptible than raw paddy and uncooked rice to

impurity and danger. Snacks are prepared inside the

house where, in the process of converting raw grain into an edible state, the food, the preparer and the cooking process are out of sight and touch of people in courtyard and on the verandah. The most common snack is tea

served with a small metal bowl of rice flakes (raw milled

rice that has been boiled, then roasted and finally pounded into rice flakes). Alternately, dry-popped maize, dry roasted soybean or commercially made biscuits may be

served with tea.

Because of their method of preparation, rice flakes

and other snacks are susceptible to impurity, but less so

then other forms of cooked food. When rice or other grains are cooked, they are placed in a medium?either water, oil

or air (dry)?and heated over a fire rendering them

porous, that is, the boundary of the grain becomes per




meable and open to absorbing the qualities of the medium

in which it is being cooked. The medium absorbs and con

ducts to the food the impurities of anyone who touches or

sees the grain with evil intent during its transformation

from raw to cooked. Different cooking media have dif

ferent potentials for absorbing and conducting: water has

the most, air the least and oil is in between. The snacks

served on the verandah are doubly shielded. First, they are cooked inside the house out of touch of low caste peo

ple who might be in the courtyard. Second, they are

cooked and served dry (sukha) to guests without further

cooking or preparation.

Compared to the courtyard, the verandah is more

"interior." By this I am referring to the increasing need

to protect the purity of food with spatial exclusions upon

people from outside the household group because the

snack served is cooked and more vulnerable to impurity and danger than the raw grains dried and winnowed in

the courtyard.

Kitchen

Kholagaun Chhetris eat two main meals each day, usu

ally consisting of lentil broth, a curry of vegetables or

meat and rice cooked in water (bhat). Water is the most

transitive medium because it readily absorbs the charac

ter of any object with which it comes into contact. As a

result, it can purify as well as pollute. In purificatory

bathing, water flows over the object or person, absorbs the

pollution and takes it away into the ground. Conversely, while it is boiling, rice sits in water which conducts the

state of the cook to the permeable rice.

Because of food's openness to absorption, cooking and eating in the kitchen are dominated as much by an

explicit concern with protecting the purity of the food, the people who eat it and the place where it is cooked and

eaten as by the practical tasks of preparing food and con

suming it (see Daryn 2002:30-31). The kitchen in tradi

tional houses consists of an earthen stove in the corner

of a raised earthen platform (see Figure 6). Women told me that mud is a very absorptive surface that is partic

ularly prone to pollution from eating?bits of food made

impure by saliva may fall on the ground?so they must

sweep and seal the floor with a purifying mixture of cow

dung and water after every meal. In some modern

houses, where the kitchen is a separate room with floors

of less or non-absorptive concrete, marble or other hard

surfaces, the floor need only be washed with water after

each meal to remove impurity. The kitchen has the most exclusive spatial prohibi

tions. Only Brahmins and other Chhetris, the castes from

whom they will accept cooked rice, were allowed to enter

Figure 6: Kitchen in a traditional house

Kholagaun Chhetri kitchens when meals were being pre

pared and eaten. People of the water-acceptable castes were allowed to enter the verandah during a meal; they were occasionally allowed to come just inside the main

entrance to ask a question but they could not enter the

kitchen. When food was not being prepared or eaten, peo

ple of water-acceptable castes could enter the kitchen, but I never saw this happen. Untouchables (water-unac

ceptable castes) could not even enter the house of a Kho

lagaun Chhetri without causing defilement of all living spaces, public and private. Thus whenever an Untouchable

wanted to interact with a Kholagaun Chhetri, they had

to remain in the courtyard and call out to the householder.

Compared with the courtyard and verandah, the

kitchen is the most interior of domestic spaces. For Kho

lagaun Chhetris, it is the room where their food and their

bodies are most vulnerable to impurity and danger so

they do their utmost to ensure it is pure by locating it in

the most inaccessible place, purifying it before and after

eating and imposing the most exclusive spatial prohibi tions on people entering it. Taken together, courtyard, verandah and kitchen form a concentric series of increas

ingly exclusive interior spaces where rice and the people

eating it are increasingly vulnerable to impurity and dan

ger, and where maintaining and protecting purity is

increasingly important.

Everyday Practice, Cognitive Knowledge and Embodied Revelation What I have tried to illustrate is that among Kholagaun Chhetris, the Hindu (tantric) concern with equivalences between various planes of existence means that the activ

ities of everyday domestic life and the places where they take place are multifaceted?corporeal, social and cos

mological. Eating nourishes the organic body, pollutes the




social person, and is an embodied experience of a House holder's attachment, illusion and the entrapment^ of life

in-the-world; washing after eating cleans the body, cleanses the social persona of impurity and is the embod ied experience of detachment and renunciation so central to balancing the attachments of the Householder's life in-the-world. Concomitantly, in carrying out these activ

ities, Kholagaun Chhetris create multifaceted concentric

spaces in their house?at once functional, social and cos

mological?that form a mandala. Their houses likewise are multifaceted: they are places to live their daily lives,

they are maps of the cosmos, and they are machines for

revelatory knowledge.

Conclusion I now end by returning to Heidegger to reflect upon

Nepali domestic architecture by way of a contrived pun, "architechne," that sees architecture as more than the

making and manipulation of space for human use but also as a structure of revealing. In architechne, the produc tion and practical use of space for human dwelling is at the same time a presencing of its enframing truth.

In contriving the word architechne, the prefix "archi"

refers to the architect and the practice of architecture which "produces space" (Till 1969:9); "creates bound

aries out of otherwise unbounded space" (Kent 1990:2); is "the thoughtful making of spaces" (Khan in Till

1969:9); "is integrally identified with human activity, experience and expression, for, in ordering space, [it] also orders human action" (Blier 1987:2); and, "involves not just the provision of shelter from the elements but the creation of social and symbolic space?a space which both mirrors and moulds the world view of its creators

and inhabitants" (Waterson 1991 :xv). In all these defi

nitions of architecture, the central idea that the archi

tect?whether professional, vernacular (see Rapoport 1969:2), indigenous (Waterson 1991 :xv) or the architec

ture without architects (Rudofsky 1964)?makes space for human habitation. Techne is a Greek word that Hei

degger points out is usually associated with the skills

and activities of a craftsman in making something use

ful. However, for him the essence of techne is a bringing forth (poiesis) into presence through the human use of

skills and activities, something that is possible and con

cealed; it is a form of revealing; and revealing (aletheia) is the essence of truth:

It [techne] reveals whatever does not bring itself forth and does not yet lie here before us.. .Thus what is deci sive in techne does not lie at all in making and manip ulating nor in the using of means, but rather in the

revealing.. .It is as revealing, and not as manufacturing, that techne is a bringing-forth. [Heidegger 1977:295]

For Heidegger, truth is not a set of propositions, state ments or knowledge about the ultimate nature of the world and the people aild things that exist within it. Instead the world is fundamentally a field of possibilities in which the existence and nature of phenomena?the people and

things that exist for us?are not given directly to our con

sciousness. Phenomena have only possibilities for our

experience of them; human thought and action bring forth certain of these possibilities to consciousness. Which pos sibilities are brought forth depends upon an historically and culturally specific whole or framework against, from and within which entities appear in consciousness. This

enframing whole is usually tacit, consisting of "what is taken for granted by the humans who inhabit such a

world" (Ihde 1979:105). From Heidegger's perspective, then, truth is a structure of revealing to consciousness certain of the world's possibilities and, by implication, of

concealing other of the world's possibilities. Techne refers to human action which brings forth this structure of

revealing and concealing. In this context of truth and

techne, architecture may be thought of as a production and ordering of useful space for human habitation and

architechne as the bringing forth of inhabited space as a

structure of revealing and concealing.

Kholagaun Chhetri domestic compounds are the result of architecture and architechne. As architecture,

they are configured by instrumental design and practi cal conduct both as auspicious spaces portending benefi cent and prosperous outcomes from the everyday tasks of Householders to bear and raise children, to sustain them selves through productive activity and to worship the

deities, and as increasingly pure and exclusive spaces to

protect inhabitants from the impurity of lower caste peo

ple. These are the possibilities of the world that come

forth into Kholagaun Chhetris' everyday consciousness as their lifeworld of the Householder. They appear in their

consciousness against, from and within their cosmology of

attachment and detachment, entrapment and liberation, illusion and revelation.

However, in Kholagaun Chhetri everyday engage ment with domestic space, household members and house

hold activities, the structure of revealing that is their cos

mology is, paradoxically, obscured. "It disappears into

usefulness" (Heidegger 1975b:46). Yet, as Heidegger's

approach helps us to see, Kholagaun Chhetris come to

know the structure of revealing that is their cosmos only

through their everyday active engagement with and con

sciousness of the things of the world. This is what I was




trying to illustrate with the spatial distribution of activi

ties surrounding the preparation and consumption of rice

and the associated spatial prohibitions. The concentric

space constructed by these activities and spatial prohibi tions produce a tacit and embodied knowing of the Hindu

[tantric] cosmos. This is the sense in which everyday acts

are architechne acts, bringing forth the cosmos in the

form of the domestic compound as the structure of reveal

ing. This mandalic space is both a map of the cosmos and

a machine for revelation of its fundamental truths. In this

sense, Kholagaun Chhetri architechne is human action

and skill that brings forth a spatial structure of reveal

ing the enigma of the Householder's lifeworld as detached

attachment?a space where truth happens.

John Gray, Department of Anthropology, University of Adelaide, Adelaide, SA 5000, Australia. E-mail: John, gray @adelaide

.edu.au.

Notes 1 The mandala form is widespread throughout South Asia.

See Gutschow and Kolver 1975; Gutschow and Bajracharya 1977; Kramrisch 1976; Barre et al. 1981; Levy 1990; Slusser 1982; and Gellner 1992.

2 The ethnographic material upon which this paper is based was collected during periods of fieldwork in Banaspati between 1973 and 2004.

3 See the Rig Veda "Hymn to Purusha" (10:XC). 4 When I began fieldwork in 1973, all the houses in Khola

gaun were of the traditional type. By 2001, traditional houses were in the minority (31 of 69). Most of the new houses were built by young men after their marriages when they sepa rated from their joint families and established separate household groups.

5 In Nepal mandala tends to refer to mystic diagrams asso

ciated with the Buddhism of Newars and Tibetan groups and yantra with the Hinduism of Brahmin-Chhetris.

6 From "Early Tibetan Mandalas: The Rossi Collection." With the kind permission of Rossi & Rossi Ltd., London, Ajit

Mookerjee Collection. From Yantra: The Tantric Symbol of Cosmic Unity, by Madhu Khanna, Thames and Hudson, London.

7 See Levy for a description of the Newar house as also an

interweaving of the material and the symbolic (1990:186 192).

8 In explaining the construction and layout of their houses, Kholagaun Chhetris rarely mentioned the Hindu Vastu Shastras (bastu), the elaborately codified architectural texts that use mandala spatiality in the construction of temples, neighbourhoods, villages, cities and houses.

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